The dispute between Ireland and the United Kingdom as it appears before the Tribunal is characterized by an almost total lack of agreement on the scientific evidence with respect to the possible consequences of the operation of the MOX plant on the marine environment of the Irish Sea.

Under these circumstances of scientific uncertainty, the Tribunal might have been expected to have followed the path it took in the Southern Bluefin Tuna Cases to prescribe a measure preserving the existing situation. In its wisdom, it did not do so. It decided, in the circumstances of the case, that, in the short period before the constitution of an arbitral tribunal under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the urgency of the situation did not require it to lay down, as binding legal obligations, the measures requested by Ireland.